


Lathkill Dale

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [92]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 19:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1576310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An anomaly opens in a Derbyshire dale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lathkill Dale

The hadrosaur was clearly spooked despite the team’s best attempts not to agitate it, but at the end of the day there was a limit to how much they could pussyfoot around and still get the job done.

Stephen could see that its powerful legs were quivering with fear as it stared around, trying to gauge which way to run next. They were deep in a Derbyshire valley, but thanks to the ARC’s latest toy, a shiny new Eurocopter EC155 helicopter able to transport the civilian response team, their equipment and up to nine soldiers in comfort, they’d been set down in a field near the head of Lathkill Dale, and had only had to come the last kilometre or so on foot.

They’d set up a cordon on either side of the anomaly and, providing the hadrosaur didn’t try to run too high up the valley side, it shouldn’t be too difficult to persuade it to follow the others and head back to its own time. There had been six of them to start with, according to the farmer. The gruff 50-year-old had been worth his weight in gold. He’d contained the incident almost single-handedly until they’d arrived, deploying two black and white collies in an attempt to keep the creatures bottled up in the valley to one side of the main dale where the anomaly had appeared.

From the knowing look on the man’s face as he’d talked to them, Stephen wouldn’t be surprised if he’d seen or heard of other strange happenings in the area. The presence of numerous caves and mine workings in the dale would fit the pattern they’d experienced in other parts of the country but, like other local farmers, this one hadn’t wanted to draw attention to the problem, so he’d simply dispatched his two sons to stand guard at either end of the public footpath running through the dale – a rather impressive mini-version of Cheddar Gorge – and done his best by himself with his dogs.

He certainly hadn’t been overly surprised when a helicopter carrying a team of black-uniformed soldiers and a motley bunch of civilians had landed in one of his fields. His only comment when they arrived had been a muttered, “Stop for tea on the way, did you?”

Three of the four remaining hadrosaurs had decided that the grass wasn’t necessarily greener on this side of the fence, so to speak, and when an all-enveloping grey mist had descended, cold, cloying and very wet, they’d finally allowed themselves to be moved back to somewhere warmer. But the last one was proving to be stubbornly uninterested in their repatriation attempts, whilst getting steadily more skittish.

So far they’d avoiding using their other new toys, the souped-up tasers they’d obtained from their counterparts in France in return for a copy of Connor’s Anomaly Detection Device. The EMPs, as the French called them, were a good addition to the ARC’s armoury, enabling creatures to be brought down without the need to use lethal force, and Stephen thought they were getting near the stage of needing to deploy them against their latest visitor.

“Cutter?” he said questioningly, speaking quietly into the microphone of his radio headset and gesturing to the bulky rifle cradled in his arms.

Cutter exchanged glances with Ryan, received a nod in return from the captain, and then gave Stephen the thumbs up.

Stephen stared to manoeuvre himself into position, concentrating on moving as slowly and non-threateningly as he could, not taking his eyes off the large, grey-green herbivore.

“If he runs, he’ll be heading straight for you,” Abby murmured, her voice clearly audible through his earpiece. “Make sure your EMP is on a high enough setting.”

“Done,” Stephen said, equally quietly. They’d taken a lot of advice from the French on what settings to use, and he had a reasonably clear idea of the device’s capabilities, but Abby was right, if it came straight at him, he couldn’t afford to take any chances. He glanced down at the control settings on the side of the rifle, increased the setting slightly, and prepared to take the shot as soon as the creature started to move into range. “Checked and increased,” he told her.

The hadrosaur lifted its duck-billed head, opened its wide mouth slightly and appeared to be scenting the air, getting a mouthful of wet Derbyshire mist for its trouble. Its tail started to move from side to side more strongly, usually a sign that they were about to take off like a rocket. Stephen braced his left foot on a large boulder, dropped one elbow to his knee and steadied himself in readiness.

As Abby had predicted, the creature bolted straight towards him.

At the same time, a yell of “Incoming!” came from one of the soldiers on the other side of the anomaly. Stephen forced himself to ignore what the hell was happening elsewhere, and took up the fractional play on the trigger. The hadrosaur took two more long strides towards him. Stephen put more pressure on the trigger and an electrical charge fizzled in the air as the current hit the creature squarely on the chest. It shook convulsively and dropped like a stone.

Over to his right he heard the discharge of another weapon and, through the grey blanket of the mist, he could see that one of the soldiers was down, another hadrosaur lying about two metres from him. Stephen’s stomach promptly executed a barrel-roll as he saw that it was Ryan who was down.

With visions of the time his lover had ended up in hospital with severe head injuries from an accidental collision with a concrete post, Stephen promptly feared the worst. But seconds later, Stephen heard Ryan’s voice over the radio link declaring firmly, “I’m fine! Thanks, Finn, good shooting.”

Stephen exhaled a pent-up breath, pausing to check that the creature he’d brought down really was out for the count, before jogging over to Ryan’s side. The soldier was on his feet, steadying himself on a boulder, a grimace of pain on his face.

“Nothing’s broken,” he said quickly, seeing the look of concern on Stephen’s face. “I just twisted my knee when that bugger came charging through. He gestured at a small hole in the ground. “Sodding rabbits.”

Ditzy came up at run, arriving a few seconds after Stephen. “Boss?”

“Fine,” Ryan said firmly. The look on his face told the medic quite clearly not to argue.

Ditzy nodded and turned to help Finn check the second downed hadrosaur. It would take approximately ten minutes for the affects of the electrical charge to wear off. During that time, they had to get the creatures back to the anomaly and, if Connor declared it good for another ten minutes or so, they’d get them through to the other side and stand guard over them to prevent them ending up as chew toys.

Shifting something that big wasn’t easy but, as Finn cheerfully remarked, you could get a lot done with brute force and a bloody great big tarpaulin.

“Connor? Is it safe to go through?” Cutter asked, tearing himself away from a study of the large herbivores long enough to glance at the anomaly.

“The readings are still strong, but it’s been open for just over three hours, so I don’t want to take any chances.” Connor glanced at the anomaly and nodded. “Make it no more than five minutes on the other side and it should be fine.”

“Finn, Kermit, go through first,” Ryan ordered. “Stephen, take a look afterwards and check it out. No one takes any risks. If push comes to shove, we can transport these two back to the Hall.”

Ryan was talking about the private zoo in Kent they now used as a base of operations for repatriating anything they couldn’t immediately get back to its own time. A permanently open anomaly that led to an enormous and ever-changing anomaly cluster had provided them with an unparalleled research opportunity as well as numerous windows to the past.

On the other side of the anomaly it was actually even wetter than Derbyshire, so it perhaps wasn’t quite so much of a surprise that the hadrosaurs had been difficult to get rid of. Dark clouds massed against a sky shot through in places with vivid crimson bands that spoke of a rapidly-setting sun. The rain was coming down in torrents and in a matter of minutes Stephen was soaked to the skin, as were the two soldiers.

“I had a bath last week,” Kermit remarked in disgust. “I’m not due another one until next month.”

Stephen grinned at the young soldier. “God knows what Cara sees in you.”

“Gotta big dick,” Kermit said smugly.

“Just because she says you’re a handful doesn’t mean you’ve got a big dick, mate,” Finn said, the sharp look in his eyes as he assessed the area for threats belying the soldiers’ banter.

A low, rumbling growl of thunder some distance away made Stephen glance at the anomaly in concern. Unstable atmospheric conditions and anomalies weren’t a good combination. They were some way out on an open, grassy plain, with trees and low hills in the distance on one side and a wide river on the other. He could see a herd of duck-billed dinosaurs by the side of the river and as far as he could tell, there were no predators in the immediate vicinity. The herd was ambling along, unconcerned, with juveniles ranging out from the main herd. Not the behaviour he’d expect to see if there were any threats nearby.

“OK, let’s get the sleeping beauties through,” he said. “I don’t want to hang around if there’s an electrical storm in the air.

As he spoke, a jagged flare of sheet lightning some distance away lit the rapidly darkening sky. That sealed the deal for him. Working as quickly as possible, they hauled the two hadrosaurs through the anomaly and retrieved the tarpaulins. The creatures were already starting to come around, lifting up their heads and making a sort of lowing bellow, like a distressed cow. Stephen waited a few minutes as they rose unsteadily to their feet, but the jagged flashes of light from the sky were becoming more frequent and the rumbles of thunder were definitely coming closer.

“Let’s go,” he announced.

Kermit and Finn didn’t need telling twice. The three of them dashed back through the anomaly at a run, just as a crack of thunder as loud as mortar fire came from overhead.

* * * * *

Ryan watched in horror as, without any prior warning, the anomaly started to flicker.

Connor’s exclamation of “Oh shit!” coincided with the sight of three figures bursting back through the rip in time seconds before it flared then winked out of existence, leaving Ryan staring at a featureless grassy slope instead of a brightly coruscating ball of light.

Stephen hit the ground, dipping his shoulder as though he’d landed on a crash mat instead of the hard Derbyshire hillside, and coming up onto his feet with all the supple grace of a large cat.

“Hands up who needs a change of underwear?” Ditzy enquired once he was certain the three men had made it back unscathed.

“Went before we left the ARC, boss,” Finn said, his face flushed with the inevitable adrenaline rush. “Can’t speak for Kermit, though.”

“Makes a good cure for constipation,” Kermit muttered, staring back at the empty air where the anomaly had been. “Fuck, that was close.”

“Electric storm came out of nowhere,” Stephen said, in response to concerned looks from both Ryan and Cutter.

Cutter promptly started quizzing Stephen on the closeness of the storm, gathering data as ever, while Ryan took a moment to get his breathing back under control. What he really wanted to do was wrap his arms around Stephen’s slender body and bury his face in the side of his lover’s neck, inhaling lemon scented shampoo and holding him tight. But they were still on a shout, so that was a very long way off being an option.

By the time Connor had finished taking readings and pronounced the anomaly extinct, everyone was as wet as the three who’d been through the anomaly. Even Abby, normally the most stoic of the lot when it came to enduring foul weather conditions, was starting to look fed up. When Cutter eventually signalled that it was all right for the team to pack up and leave, Ryan levered himself up off the rock he’d been leaning against and tried to put his weight on the knee he’d twisted. Pain lanced through his leg as sharp as one of Blade’s knives. Ditzy gave him an appraising look, but said nothing.

The way out of Lathkill Dale was up a steep path that wound up the valley side. By the time they reached the top, Ryan was limping badly, but the path was too narrow for anyone to lend him any assistance. He let the others go on ahead, refusing Ditzy’s offer to strap the knee up. He knew that if he kept moving, he’d do better than stopping and risking it stiffening up, but as soon as they got back to the helicopter, he was going to drop the stuff upper lip act and throw as many painkillers as Ditzy would allow down his neck. And anyway, he was damned if he was dropping his trousers half way up a sodding hillside.

In a long and admittedly colourful military career, Ryan had been injured in more different ways than he could remember, but it was often the seemingly stupid minor injuries that caused a disproportionate amount of trouble. And naturally they always happened in the most inconvenient places, such as when he had a 40 – 50 metre climb to negotiate on a path just about wide enough to accommodate an anorexic sheep. By the time Ryan got to the top, his leg was agony from ankle to hip and he was sweating despite the chill in the air.

The farmer and his wife were waiting from them in the farmyard. Ditzy shot one look at Ryan and promptly beat everyone else to the offer of hot coffee and soup. The farmhouse kitchen was large and warm with a huge pan was bubbling on top of an old-fashioned range and a wood-burning stove was throwing out even more heat. Wet jackets were quickly stripped off and draped over every available chair as the team crowded in, looking – and probably smelling – like a herd of wet sheep.

Mrs Merrifield, seeing Ryan’s limp, promptly ushered him into a small parlour, leaving him alone with Ditzy and his medical kit.

“Trousers down, boss.”

“Your hands are going to be fucking freezing,” Ryan grumbled.

“Don’t take any crap off him,” Stephen commented from the doorway.

Ditzy grinned. “Do I ever? Get him some hot coffee, will you, while I get this knee strapped up?”

Stephen promptly disappeared to do as he’d been bidden, and when he came back, the coffee he handed to Ryan had been liberally laced with brandy. By then, Ryan’s trousers were around his ankles and he’d already been treated to a glare from Ditzy when the state of his knee had been revealed. The flesh was swollen and was already starting to discolour from the impact with a rock that Ryan had omitted to mention. Ditzy poked and prodded enough to satisfy himself that Ryan had been telling the truth when he’d said nothing was broken.

A crepe bandage was wound around his leg for support and Ryan was instructed to swallow some strong painkillers and a large dose of anti-inflammatories. With Stephen’s help, he got his trousers back up, but then sat down heavily again, his head swimming slightly from the throbbing pain.

“Bloody stupid,” he muttered, annoyed at his own weakness.

Ditzy simply ignored him and discreetly left him alone with Stephen for a moment.

As soon as the door closed behind the medic, Stephen sank down to his knees next to Ryan’s chair and pulled him into a hug. “Christ, that looked painful,” he said, pressing a kiss to the side of Ryan’s neck.

Stephen knew him far too well for Ryan to get away with any bullshit, so he simply nodded his agreement and hugged Stephen back.

“That was a bloody close call back there,” Ryan said, his arms tightening around his lover in the embrace he’d been looking forward to for the last hour.

“Goes with the territory,” Stephen said pragmatically, and Ryan knew better than to press the subject.

There’d be plenty of time to get rid of the lingering tensions from the shout once they got home. For now, a quick, coffee-tasting kiss was the most they could allow themselves but as Stephen’s mouth opened under his, Ryan simply made the most of the moment.

The rest could wait.


End file.
